The Liberals Thread

[MacCruiskeen]

This is the UK Foreign Secretary, a buffoonish right-wing neo#liberal Tory, quoted in the #liberal Guardian four hours ago:

Boris Johnson says Trump is 'in many aspects a liberal guy from New York' - Politics live

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/bl ... 4c91946f52

What is this word doing? What does it signify? Who does it help? Who does it hinder?

[MacCruiskeen]

Seething liberals vow revolution in Democratic Party

The Hill
Jonathan Easley 3 days ago

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... spartanntp

"liberals", "progressives", "the left" - all used interchangeably. Again: what does the word even mean? And who is helped by this confusion? (Note that the -- literally unspeakable -- word "socialist" is conspicuous by its absence.)

This line is priceless:

A number of liberal Democrats are fuming over pie-in-the-sky liberals who they say prized idealism over pragmatism.

What?

[Luther Blissett]

Ahhhhhh I laughed. I read the piece but it was written so poorly that I missed these.

[MacCruiskeen]

What Does it Mean to be an American Liberal Today?

by Danny Haiphong

Submitted by Danny Haiphong on Tue, 06/07/2016 - 17:55

http://www.blackagendareport.com/blog/2340

Liberalism is “an ideology rooted in a nation founded upon imperial conquest and rabid capitalist exploitation.” Its main proponent in is the Democratic Party, which “has become the engine of US imperial rule.” Hillary Clinton is a twin of Barack Obama. “While Obama intensified imperial war, austerity, and domestic repression, liberal supporters sat on the sidelines and watched.” Liberals wage fake wars on Republicans and real wars on the world.

“An American liberal is the arbiter of a more effective politics of exploitation and oppression.”

If anything, the 2016 elections have exposed the steep descent into bankruptcy of liberal politics in the US. The concluding years of the 1970s began a right-wing, authoritarian process in the US that grew from the roots of a capitalist economic base in decline. Historians and left academics framed this process not as a sign of decline but as a right-wing backlash. The term neo-liberalism was created to describe the backlash. However, "neo-liberalism" was less new than it was an exposure of what has always been true about American liberalism. American liberalism has always been an ideology created by and for the interests of the American capitalist empire, regardless of the period.

To be a liberal in America has meant being a participant in the highest form of opportunism. Liberals have historically championed the freedoms of American capitalist society and defended developments like the enslavement of Africans as a necessary evil. Once these evils become unmanageable, liberals jump ship and look to support more palatable forms of exploitation. For example, during the Civil War, many American liberals did not oppose slavery. It wasn't until the combined force of African rebellion and industrial capitalist development dug the slave-ocracy's grave that many liberals warmed to the idea of abolition.

“It was the bankrupt liberal leadership of the labor movement that collaborated with President Roosevelt to "stabilize" capitalism.”

During the Great Depression, US capitalism was on the verge of collapse. A recovery in the system seemed nowhere in sight. Socialists played a key role in organizing unions across industries to strengthen the position of the working class in this time of crisis. It was the bankrupt liberal leadership of the labor movement that collaborated with President Roosevelt to "stabilize" capitalism. This leadership proceeded to settle for legislative gains and purge socialist elements. And so began the labor movement's descent into the back pockets of the Democratic Party.

American liberalism has thus historically been able to fester and thrive in the US political landscape in periods of reforms in the capitalist order. The transition from chattel slavery to industrial capital, and subsequently from industrial capital to the so-called age of social welfare, gave American liberals political space to adjust their bourgeois principles to fit the needs of the time. In the current period of capitalist decline, this is no longer possible. The rule of capital has reached its highest stage and it must eliminate all that stands in its way of unfettered profit accumulation.

This period of capitalism has stripped liberalism naked of its supposedly "progressive" veneer. US capitalism has no room for welfare politics. The system's rate of profit is falling and its corporate debt is mounting. Finance capital has speculated the economic base of US society into a hole it cannot crawl out of. It is under these conditions that liberalism has revealed itself for what it really is: an ideology rooted in a nation founded upon imperial conquest and rabid capitalist exploitation.

“Finance capital has speculated the economic base of US society into a hole it cannot crawl out of.”

In the US, the home base for liberal politics resides historically in the Democratic Party. During the height of anti-communist hysteria and Black liberation insurgency in the mid 20th century, the Democratic Party was compelled to promote itself as a force of progress. To this day, the Democratic Party takes credit for Civil Rights reforms and anti-poverty programs that were pressured into existence by grassroots movements. However, the wheels of reform have reversed. No longer able to deceive the masses with crumbs, the Democratic Party has become the engine of US imperial rule.

Liberals have been instrumental in this political shift. The Obama era has been the quintessential example of what liberal bankruptcy looks like in the age of neo-liberal, capitalist decline. While Obama intensified imperial war, austerity, and domestic repression, liberal supporters sat on the sidelines and watched. In some cases, liberal forces cheered on Obama's policies (like the intervention in Libya) and decried Republican "obstructionism" as the primary reason for why social conditions continued to worsen under his rule. Yet these same liberals refused to acknowledge that it was Obama who sidestepped a Democratic Party majority in the House and Senate in 2009 and 2010 to push through the corporate Affordable Care Act and dash any hopes of universal healthcare being instituted in the US in the near future.

“While Sanders is no revolutionary force, his brand of liberalism is now outmoded by the world capitalist system that he seeks to manage.”

The case of Bernie Sanders in particular and the 2016 elections have broadly exposed the Democratic Party and its bourgeois liberal base for the agents of Empire they've always been. Hillary Clinton and her supporters have tirelessly attacked Sanders throughout the duration of his campaign. The reason for the attacks is simple. While Sanders is no revolutionary force, his brand of liberalism is now outmoded by the world capitalist system that he seeks to manage. Finance capital cannot back a candidate that calls for universal healthcare, affordable public university, or higher taxation of the rich. These policy proposals run in contradistinction to neo-liberal capital's need to turn everything into a profitable market to ensure its survival.

When one asks what an American liberal is today, it is important to be honest. An American liberal is the arbiter of a more effective politics of exploitation and oppression. The American liberal supports the Democratic Party by waging a fake war with the Republicans while the entire establishment moves ever more rightward. The American liberal is no less an enemy of social progress than the right-wing, Republican oriented populace. The American liberal must be combated or its ideological stranglehold over emergent movements now and in the future will continue to lead them astray.

Danny Haiphong is an Asian activist and political analyst in the Boston area. He can be reached at wakeupriseup1990@gmail.com.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/blog/2340

[OP ED]

Seething liberals vow revolution in Democratic Party

The Hill
Jonathan Easley 3 days ago

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... spartanntp

"liberals", "progressives", "the left" - all used interchangeably. Again: what does the word even mean? And who is helped by this confusion? (Note that the -- literally unspeakable -- word "socialist" is conspicuous by its absence.)

This line is priceless:

A number of liberal Democrats are fuming over pie-in-the-sky liberals who they say prized idealism over pragmatism.

What?

That's where people like myself get cussed out on Facebook because only people in the safe places are allowed to vote based on personal preference or conscience.

[dada]

Zinn's essay, "Aggressive Liberalism"

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/AggressiveLiberalism_HZOW.html

Here, I'm preemptively addressing the upcoming 'liberal paradox' talk that will be making the rounds in the press during the next week. Just staying ahead of the curve.

Also, I think this thread deserves bumping.

Of course liberalism won't listen to criticism. It will continue marching on, doubling-down on its bankrupt position. Talk lofty Obama-speak, right up to the point where evolution explodes upwards. And then act surprised, like it didn't see it coming.

"The concept of paradox is useful to our innocence. We keep it as a last defense, first erecting two other barriers. The first is not to look for, or not to see, those facts that challenge our deepest beliefs. The second is (when the world will not tolerate our ignorance) to keep separate in our consciousness those elements which, brought together, would explode the myths of our culture. When both those restraining walls collapse, we fall back, as an emergency measure, on the explanation: It's one of those paradoxes-an incredible but true combination.

With this triple defense, the liberal democracy of the Western world, bedecked with universal suffrage, parliamentary representation, technological progress, mass education, Bills of Rights, social welfare, has managed to maintain its reputation for beneficence-despite its record of imperialism, war, racism, and exploitation. The unpleasant facts are first ignored (or made pallid by judicious juxtaposition with the more blatant sins of others). Then they are kept in a different compartment of the brain. Then, when the brain is so jostled that separation becomes impossible, the essential goodness of what we call Western Civilization is kept intact by the concept of paradox. Thus, liberalism can remain unscratched by the most prurient of juxtapositions, and the entire social system for which it is the shorthand symbol-the bad as well as the good-can remain unquestioned."

"...in a world which has not yet developed either the mind or the mechanism for humane cooperation, power and privilege tend to be as rapacious as the degree of resistance by the victims will permit. That aggression at home is more disguised, more sporadic, more controlled than aggression abroad, comes from the development of countervailing forces at home, while those abroad have usually been helpless before the marauding foreign power. Where internal groups have been similarly helpless they have been treated as ruthlessly as enemies in wartime: the blacks, the Indians, the workingmen before they organized, the students when they dared to challenge authority.

All this suggests that we need to stop looking with special fondness on that group of Western states which represent, in those millions of textbooks distributed in high schools and colleges "Western civilization." Their external behavior is not an unfortunate departure from character It is what their internal behavior would be if undeterred by a population whose greater literacy and greater activity (a necessity of modern industrial development) enabled them to at least partially resist."

[MacCruiskeen]

#Bullying #Misogyny #Actually Existing Fascism

[MacCruiskeen]

Actually Existing Fascism

Posted on November 12, 2016 by doloresvek

With the election of Donald Trump, we’re being told that now is the time to fear fascism in America.


[...]

I know it’s ancient history to be talking about the Bush years, just like it’s hopelessly passé to unironically talk about “imperialism” in 2016, but please indulge me. I remember back when George W. Bush was president, torturing people around the world, “shredding the Constitution,” attacking Iraq and Afghanistan and threatening Iran with nukes. At the time, it was pretty common, even popular and fashionable, to call the president a fascist. Even on TV! Everyone who wasn’t a Republican was radical: it seemed like Democrats and communists alike could gripe over everything from a stolen Florida election to the invasion of Iraq.

Then sometime around 2007, a neoliberal and fundamentally conservative mediocrity named Barack Obama showed up, and while he made a lot of noise about how different he was, there was almost nothing of substance to back it up. Once he was president, all the stuff that was proof of George W.’s fascism became a trifling issue, a simple mistake, or a regrettable necessity when Obama did it. As Obama continued George Bush’s legacy, and as Dick Cheney came out in support of Hillary Clinton, liberals stopped thinking of the Bush administration as a fascist criminal enterprise and started seeing it through Sorkin-colored glasses, with a George Bush-Michelle Obama hug at the twilight of the Obama presidency marking the decisive transition.

So I actually remember how this went down the last time the mainstream was this comfortable talking about fascism—although the chorus was never this deafening. I remember that all the liberals quieted down about fascism when their guy was doing it. So did a lot of the radicals, to the eternal shame and discredit of those absolute frauds. As the popular Democrat Obama brought hell to millions with the brazenness of a Duce, calling the president a fascist went back to the fringes, where it had been, and where it will be again once it’s no longer politically expedient for people at the top to have us raising hell against Trump. I know exactly how this goes, since it all happened before, and not very long ago, either. And just like with Obama, whose coronation was a sort of inversion of this, I remember that anyone who’s remotely skeptical of this obviously elite-approved narrative will get dismissed as a crank or a spoilsport.

However, maybe for now we could have some perspective. I know he’s popular and cool, but Obama’s been in office nearly a full eight years. Maybe these last 70 days, the radicals now hyperventilating over Trump could develop some idea of what Obama’s actually been doing this entire time?

And if the still-uncompromising black revolutionary and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal can say “If Trump is the price we have to pay to defeat Clintonian neoliberalism–so be it,” then maybe some of the liberals still dry-heaving can pull themselves together and learn a single thing about what America and the world are really like outside their privileged little bubbles? I mean, I know how fond these people are of pretending that they’re the only adults in the room, the only people using their inside voices. Maybe they could try to be as smart as Trevor Noah keeps telling them they are.

In the meantime, I’ll go ahead and be skeptical about all the no pasarán shit that cropped up the instant Hillary lost. Maybe if the inspiring new Credulous Dipshit Brigades could name a single fucking instance of fascism that’s not practiced by Obama, then this whole thing wouldn’t look like such an obviously astroturfed, color-revolutiony scam.

What I know for sure is that any radicals who end up calling liberals comrade in the coming weeks are allying themselves with people who want a more violent, more genocidal, and ultimately more fascist president. Almost every liberal complaint includes references to Donald Trump weakening NATO, as though that wouldn’t be one of the most progressive developments for the good of humanity. This is where liberals give themselves away: just like they wanted Obama to restore America’s reputation after Bush so it could be the most effective fortress of capitalism, they trust Clinton to be a more capable imperial steward than Trump. If you find yourself shoulder-to-shoulder with liberals at the barricades, know that your allies are fighting on behalf of American fascism, if the word means what we keep hearing it does.

And if you think Trump is more evil than Obama or Hillary Clinton, you’re ignorant as fuck and you’re a liberal.

https://doloresvek.wordpress.com/2016/1 ... g-fascism/

[guruilla]

I liked this ^^^ enough to share it. First I have heard of Dolores Vek, though. Who is she, anyone know?

[brekin]

And if the still-uncompromising black revolutionary and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal can say “If Trump is the price we have to pay to defeat Clintonian neoliberalism–so be it,” then maybe some of the liberals still dry-heaving can pull themselves together and learn a single thing about what America and the world are really like outside their privileged little bubbles?

Ha, ha, this is too rich. Mumia Abu-Jamal? Really? Jeezy.

[Sounder]

Yes brekin, Mumia Abu-Jamal did say that.

Only to be studiously ignored by unconsciously neo-liberal 'radicals'.

[norton ash]

I liked this ^^^ enough to share it. First I have heard of Dolores Vek, though. Who is she, anyone know?

I was introduced recently via the Rancid Honeytrap... Tarzie's hard left antifa site.

https://ohtarzie.wordpress.com/

[Luther Blissett]

Liberals are scared shitless of / love to make fun of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

[Sounder]

Thanks for that link Norton, but now i'm confused, you wrote that Tarzie has a hard left antifa site. Are the newly minted antifa morons he speaks of, different than the old antifa morons? Maybe I need to read some Tarzie.

Tarzie says:
November 14, 2016 at 2:51 am

Reblogged this on The Rancid Honeytrap and commented:
I think I have found my soulmate, seen here, giving global capital’s newly minted antifa morons the drubbing they so richly deserve:

[norton ash]

global capital’s newly minted antifa morons

I consider Tarzie anti-fascist... and here he's calling out the 'newly-minted' fake version who serve global capital.

So, I would say that in his opinion, they are indeed different from the 'old' anti-fa.